The great "lock in" of 2025: how to design your own blueprint for September to December

You are listening to the Broke Generation podcast, the podcast that helps you feel better about money so you can be better with money. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I'm recording and you are listening to this podcast today. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another solo episode of the Broke Generation podcast. It is Thursday again. Where has the week gone? We are fully kicked off into my challenge, Smart Spend Timber. It is an engaged group this time. The chat is popping off. Community element, this is what you're paying for when you join, even though it's very affordable if I do say so myself. I like to make these things affordable so that it is an investment, so that you're putting something into, I guess, committing to it. Because when things are free, we think it's better, but it means that we don't actually do it. Have you ever had a free trial to something that you're like, oh my God, yeah, I'll just use it to the max and then you don't, you forget about it. So when you pay for something, you do invariably put a little bit more effort in. But of course, that needs to be something that is affordable. So we like to balance that. But yeah, the community element is really, is really where that sort of investment comes in because I'm in there every day. Everybody else is in the group every day. You're being held accountable. It's just, it's just a really good time. Enrollments have now closed, but I did have a couple of smart people email me and be like, can I still join? And I was like, you know what? Ask and thou shall receive. So if you are kicking yourself that you have missed out on joining the rad smart spenders challenge for September, please send me an email. Hello at the broke generation.com. I will send you a personalized backdoor link if you would like to join. We're only four days in, so you can just get straight into your tracking and keeping up with everybody in the group, holding you accountable and inspiring you. What we're talking about for today's episode and for what is going to become a little bit of a series on the podcast for the next few months is this concept of locking in. If you are on social media, you will probably have seen that everybody is talking about locking in and look, I don't want to be that person, but, um, may we cast our minds back to September, 2023 when I came up with my millhouse mindset and I was like, you know what? Everything is coming up. Millhouse Q4 is the sprint quarter and it has been my entire personality ever since. Um, yeah, I was two years ahead of this trend. I've just been patiently waiting for the world to get on board. And this year is that year. Now somebody pointed out to me that they think that it is because September started on a Monday this year and November ends on a Sunday. I believe I heard somebody saying, and look, that does make it a very neat package, but I'm also seeing, I'm seeing many variations of the lock-in trend. It's basically, some are doing September, October, November because of that really nice, like, date anchor. Some people are doing the right to the end of the year. It's, it's a whole kind of thing, but the crux of it is this. It is this final push, this sprint to the end of the year. It is locking in on your goals. It's not necessarily literally locking yourself inside, though I guess for some people they might want to do that, but it's locking in on whether it's multiple goals, one area of your life, and really going all in on that for the rest of the year to give yourself that headstart, to not succumb to that really, like, tempting feeling of going, you know what, let's just leave it. Let's just leave it to next year. I'll fix myself in the near year, you know, all of those toxic things. Not that we're obviously fixing ourselves now, but I think that sort of idea of trying to change everything all at once and this transformation porn that we see and this idea that we're a problem to be fixed is kind of related to that prequel phase of avoiding. When we want to make some changes or we know that we've slipped into some unhelpful habits or we just have that sense of knowing that something isn't where we want it to be, and of course I'm speaking primarily in the financial sense, but this can be with every area of your life. When we go, it's too late now, I can't make any progress, or when we wait for the perfect conditions, that actually creates more pressure and invites us to almost feel like we need to change everything overnight and like those problems are just, while we're avoiding them and we're acquiring the immediate psychological comfort for avoiding them and going, you know what, I'll do it in the new year, those things we want to change are just bubbling away and ultimately probably getting worse. Because let's take your spending habits for example, a lot of people in Smart Spentember are telling me, you know, I was really good earlier in the year but I've really slipped into some bad habits recently because of a job change, because of winter, because of summer, depending on where you are in the world, because of a life change, because I've had a baby, because I've gone back to work, all these kinds of things. There's been something that has kind of thrown you off course and when we go, you know what, fuck it, it's too late now, I'm just going to deal with it in the new year, we're actually more likely to engage with more of the habits than we're already engaging with now. Because when we go, I'm not doing anything about that, you know, we sort of think that, you know, I'll just keep things exactly as they are but what actually happens is one, the impact of those things may compound, you know, if you're burning through your savings, if you're putting things on credit card debt, that can rack up and that can get worse but also the habits become more and more and more baked in. So we go, oh you know what, I'm just going to leave it, I'm just going to leave it being a bit messy until the new year but what actually happens is we're creating these new habits and these new beliefs and all of this new evidence to uphold a new mindset that actually, fuck it, I can't do it and it gets more and more out of reach to actually do anything about it. So I am a big fan of the lock-in, obviously, because I invented it, I'm joking, but you know, if you've listened to this podcast for any length of time you will know that Q4 is my favourite quarter, it has been the area where I consistently make the most change in my financial habits, it's often a time when I take on like a new step goal or does anybody remember when I did the daily K, the daily K on Instagram, I ran a kilometre around my block every day for 30 days or something. I love shit like that, like it doesn't, I think for me things like that when you're tying in like a movement goal it's sort of low-hanging fruit to help build momentum, like I often say if you're achieving in one area that can help spill over into another area so I often anchor financial sprints to some kind of movement goal because the movement goal is a bit less, it's just a bit easier, I think, for me and I find those kinds of goals that, you know, it's a kilometre around the block or it's, do you remember my increasing step goal from last year, I started with like 5,000 steps a day, 7,500 steps for a week, 7,500 steps a day for a week, 10,000 steps a day for a week, 12,500 steps a day for a week, 15,000 steps a day for a week and 20,000 steps a day for a week across six weeks. That was really good and both of those types of mechanisms have built motivation, made me feel more confident in myself, made me feel more trusting in myself, given me that kind of easy follow-through that then I can copy and paste into other areas of my lock-in, let's call it, my final quarter of the year, my final sprint and for me those kind of movement goals are healing because so much of my previous relationship with exercise has been deeply, like deep down, related to losing weight and when I really kind of changed my relationship with my body and when I really let go of a lot of those feelings that I'd had for so many years that I needed to lose weight or that I, you know, I just needed to get back on the wagon or I would do those things secretly hoping that I would lose weight or I would go to the gym and go it's just about health but it wasn't. It was ultimately I wanted to lose weight. Over time and look I think my wardrobe project was a big part of my body stuff but that is a whole other conversation. Over time as I've become more at peace with my body and I've really embedded body neutrality into my life and my mindset, those kinds of momentum building challenges like my step goal, like the daily K or whatever it might be, they really helped me with movement outside of expectation. I think if you relate to what I've said where every attempt that you've had to have a good relationship with moving your body has ultimately been tied to weight loss you'll know what I mean by this but it gave me space to move my body and you know there's a behavioral container there because you know it would be lovely if we could just go yeah I'm just going to move my body for the for the love of moving my body and some people can do that or they say they can do that whether they mean it or not I'll never know but for me you know we are still human beings we do still broadly speaking resist the things that we want to do like the human brain really just wants comfort it wants to do what's easiest so anything that is unfamiliar no matter how good it is for you no matter how good it feels is always going to cause friction to varying degrees depending on the type of person you are, your personality type, your level of neurodivergence, whatever. So that's kind of where the challenge element comes into it for me that's helpful in getting me to actually do it getting me to feel excited about it and getting me to build follow-through with it but the nature of the challenge and the way that I'm building momentum is completely irrelevant to what my body is doing I could do the step challenge and I could double in size during that time but I've still achieved the step challenge the daily K it wasn't anything about speed it was literally just about doing it and what was really helpful for me in that is that I could succeed outside of whatever happened to my weight I don't even weigh myself aside from when the doctor fucking forced me but do you see what I'm saying there's a different outcome so that's really the crux of my sort of financial and movement approach to the end of the year now in terms of your lock-in I want this sort of first episode to set you up get you started get you thinking about what the lock-in is going to look like for you before you go I've missed my chance because it's already the fourth of September no no you can start whenever you want you don't need to wait for the conditions to be perfect you need to wait for the dates to be perfect if you want to get in on the lock-in get in on the lock-in it is consider it a automatic door that is very slowly closing you're standing in front of it and on the other side of it is things that you want and it is very slowly closing like so slowly every day that goes by it closes a little bit more if you can still fit your juicy juicy booty through the gap in that door you can join even if you have to contort yourself even though there's two weeks to go join but let's say what I'm saying is it's only September 4th the doors have not closed that much you can still jump in and start we love it when the dates are pretty and they work well for the brain when it starts on a Monday and ends on a Sunday but do not think you have missed your chance that is your first tip we're going to come to tips later but it's your first thing I need you to know in terms of how we're going to approach the lock-in firstly I want you to think about what is happening seasonally for where you are a lot of the lock-in content originated from what I understand from what I've seen anyway in the northern hemisphere because summer is over people have been having like big seasons of fun or spending or whatever and now it's like locking in as the weather draws in as the nights draw in as it starts to get darker outside you know it's it's locking it's cozy it's head down bum up if you're in the southern hemisphere however we are the other way around we have just had winter and you might be thinking shit I should have locked in but it's really hard for us down here because a lot of content we consume is from the US and the UK or Canada or Europe and so the seasons are completely flipped so all of the like preparing for summer stuff is like so opposite for us and the same with this so if you were in the northern hemisphere you might be like yep it's September you know kids are going back to school whether you have kids or not everybody's like hyper aware of when you would have gone back to school if you are in the southern hemisphere and you're like how does this really work we have it the other way around we get to lean into the season of renewal we get to build up to summer being at the end of the year rather than wind down from summer that we've just had so if you're thinking oh this isn't going to work for me because I'm not in that season that's not true it absolutely is still going to work for you if this is appealing to you but just think about the energy that you want to bring from it are you winding down and refining before Christmas are you doing that in a cozy indoor way or are you leaning into the renewal sense of spring the build-up are you building up to something rather than winding down from something it makes a difference with the way that you approach it because if you come into it with that winding down mindset you're going to be like this is not going to work because you know summer is coming people are getting people are talking about having time off maybe maybe if you work in education you might be getting ready to have your fucking long-awaited summer holiday if you've got kids they're going to be getting all buzzy about things happening into the year about Christmas but all those activities that start to come up then so you've got to approach it with the right energy based on where you are that is the first thing the next thing we need to do is really think about what we're going to focus on obviously you're listening to this podcast i would hope that one of your areas is finances but what is it within that you probably have an intuitive knowing of where you need to pay attention it might be something broad like you know your spending's out of control you're not updating your budget as much you know got a lot of people in smart spend timber being like i've got all my money pots that i put my stuff in but it's just chaos and it the numbers aren't right because things have changed and i haven't updated it so there might be an organization piece it might be that you've slipped back into a really specific habit of buying lunch or of ordering uber eats or of shopping online someone said the other day i've just got to get off the mecca home page honestly preach it that place is a money pit so is ikea by the way oh my god when i was in there i was like i need to be escorted out by security what is happening maybe it's to do with money that's coming in maybe you've had a pay rise and you're not optimizing it maybe you were like i'm gonna make the most of this extra five grand and you're like whoopsie i just absorbed it into my income maybe you have taken on a new expense but you haven't fully reconciled it yet maybe your income has changed but your habits have not you know you you'll know roughly what it is and your challenge is to choose something and then hone in on that doesn't need to be super specific yet but we need to know what it is that we're going to work on so let's say that finance is your primary one what i then want you to do is touching on what i just said about copy and pasting momentum i want you to stack it with something else now don't i don't want you to feel overwhelmed by this and be like oh my god i have to do two things like what this isn't trying to overwhelm you this is trying to make it easier for you money stuff is very complicated because it's very very emotional it's also there's a mathematical challenge to it there might be a genuine lack of resources you might run into obstacles that are completely out of your control whereas if we take something that is a little bit more in our control or something that maybe we feel a little bit more confident at for example my step challenge we can as i said before copy and paste that motivation or build up motivation in a different way now you might find that your your financial goal or whatever is going to be enough you're going to build up enough momentum there but if you think yeah look i like this idea of juicing up my motivation and borrowing it from somewhere else have a think about what that might look like for you it might be something like getting outside every day with your baby or doing your laundry on a monday i don't know what people do emptying the dishwasher every day might be writing your meals down on a seven-day planner my husband and i do this and it's actually become a game um this helps us kind of better plan what we're eating because we get a meal box and then we get a few groceries for the other meals and for you know breakfast and lunches and things like that and so we like plan out the week like what day we're having what meal from the meal box and what we're doing on the other days we see my husband's family for dinner a bit so like that goes on there if somebody's out it's like emma out blah blah but it's become a bit of a game now because we um we like write it in code on the board so if it's like family dinner it's like fd but then other times it might be like bb atf and it's like what on earth is that and it's like beef burgers and the football or something like and whoever's written it the other person has to guess so it's kind of become a bit of a bit of fun but you know that's kind of an idea of something around the house that you'll you know almost definitely stick to but it will give you that confidence and that sense of self-efficacy that you actually can do the things that you want to do and then we borrow that motivation from elsewhere it doesn't necessarily need to be something that you think you're going to do but really just cross pollinating two goals like sometimes you know taylor swift said it right in her absolute banger of a song that she collabed with boys like girls on and nobody ever talks about it two is better than one oh what a banger if you remember that song like where was this song through through the last year where taylor's been like the biggest megastar in the entire world nobody has mentioned this song i'm like are we gonna anyway anyway i'm going off track sometimes two goals is better than one because you can borrow the momentum from one and put it into the other and then you're getting i guess bang for your buck double bang for your effort how good is that so they're your first two tasks think about how you're approaching it in the energy that you're bringing think both about where you are in the world in that sense for whether it is like winding down or building up but also what is going on in your life have you got something that's happening at the end of the year something that you can look forward to something that you can work up to you know use the things that are happening in your life do not take everything i say as as like the end of the line my goal is i used to have a teacher at school that said i'm a facilitator mr mcnulty if you're listening you had an impact on me but he said i'm a facilitator like i'm not here to tell you exactly what to do i'm here to facilitate your learning that is what i am doing here i am not here to tell you the exact way to do your lock-in i am facilitating thought starters that you can then take and personalize it yourself your second thing is to pick your kind of primary and secondary area or two cross-pollinating areas that you are going to work on throughout the lock-in support for this episode comes from kobe the mortgage broker making finance fun simple and accessible for all kobe is an absolute powerhouse of a broker helping first and family home buyers purchase property with confidence working with kobe is like having your own home loan cheerleader in your corner she is with you every step of the way right from getting ready to buy to popping the champagne and moving in that was the case for one of her recent clients who purchased their first home at 55 years old proving that is truly never too late after just six weeks of working with kobe they officially became a homeowner if you're ready to start your first or next home journey or you want to discuss refinancing to a loan that better suits your circumstances head to at finance with kobe on instagram or visit finance with kobe dot com dot au that's finance with kobe k-o-b-e dot com dot au all right let's get back into the episode then we need to think about how we're actually going to deploy this because you are going to feel an absolute buzz of motivation when you start this you might already be feeling it now you're going to be like yes perfect oh my god the lock-in there's a word for it there's something that is gonna fix everything i think that i need to fix right now there's you know i am gonna do it because it's exciting and it always sounds so much more exciting at the beginning than it is when you're two weeks in and you're like fuck i can't have a bagel to eat what i've brought from home so we want to think about how we're actually going to deploy it a couple of different options for you here and again take these as thought starters think about what might work for you and how you can anchor it to your life for example if you've got a holiday coming up or somewhere in between the time between now and then so you've got time off work if you've got a busy period at work if you've got you know all of this stuff how can you plan it best for the life that you are going to lead over the next four months however i want to cast your mind back to last week's episode if you listened if you didn't listen go back and listen because it talks all about the power of september as your sort of launch pad for the rest of the year so it fits in really nicely with this lock-in theme this lock-in series and this sort of approach to the rest of the year so go and listen to that if you haven't but one key thing that i mentioned from there is kind of a four-month approach an individual approach to each of the next four months so september is kind of monitor and awareness month have a look rather than diving straight into everything that you want to change think about okay what can i try on for size here what can i observe here where is my money going that's exactly what we're doing in spentember where am i wasting time scrolling on my phone what in my day would i want to change gather all of that information and start testing and trialing and rehearsing things start sort of planting some seeds so that we are building up gradually going to give you an example of this my september at the moment looks like running spentember with my challenges i'm doing it along with them i am tracking along with them i always try and do my challenges along with my participants to better help facilitate them so i'm getting really aware of where my money is going and what my sprint will be and what kind of things that i can try on during september that i can later deploy in october so in the money sense that is where i'm getting all my awareness i'm being mindful and i'm being good with my money but there's not a specific thing that i'm working on yet because i'm going to work out what that is once i've gathered the data so september is all about gathering the data the other thing that september is for for me is practicing rehearsing and testing so there is a yoga class was actually two yoga classes at like community centers in my area it's like five dollars a session or something and i love that it's uh just you pay when you go and if you can't make it you don't pay none of this like you know you know how yeah and i know why they do it and it's not nothing against them they've got to survive and i know it's a really expensive business model to run if you run a pilates or a yoga studio but you know how places are like it's one billion dollars for one class or you can pay one billion and one dollars and get unlimited and you're like for fuck's sake i have to get the unlimited then because it's just completely illogical to pay the one class but then you don't go as much as you think you will and then you're resentful about it anyway i love that these classes are just they're at the community center they're just five dollars you know you go in your like paint stain t-shirt if you want there's no like lululemon influencers in there no offense it's just great anyway i've got a bit of a busy month with a couple of work trips uh in september and the beginning of october and so my brain is like oh i'll wait until i can go regularly and then i'm like no we're going to go because it's september and because we are locking in because we are on the runway to the end of the year i'm just going to go when i can go today i could go could i have easily stayed at home and kept working yes would i have felt as good as i do right now having gone no would i have got a rung on the board would i have started to build some evidence that i can go that i can go regularly no without going today i wouldn't have we we like to think that each individual decision is worthless unless it is a collective group of constant ongoing decisions that is not true every time you do something you are building a little grain of evidence remember how we've talked about evidence fueling our beliefs every time i go it is building a bit of evidence that i like it that i can go i'm the type of person that builds it into my day that i'm the type of person that does yoga i'm the type of person that enjoys yoga i'm the type of person that benefits yoga it gives me a bit of a taster likewise with my walks i'm living in my new area i'm loving my new walks and i'm starting to try on some types of challenges that i might set myself for the new year i'm working out is it a step challenge is it doing a certain route every day i've got a few routes that i do like a long route and then a shorter version of that route and then a route that is in the other direction i've also got a couple of routes that i want to try so i'm kind of working out whether i do a lucky dip situation whether i try and do a certain number of walks per week certain number of hours of walking like i'm still trialing it out but it is on my mind so it's this sort of halfway haps between having fully started pursuing the outcome and the completion but not we're still having one foot in the camp but not being out completely so i'm in here gathering data seeing how i feel seeing what might be possible seeing where i can unlock new routines and then i will build that in for the latter part of my lock-in so that's kind of the role of september for me because the quarter is obviously october november december but like i said in last week's episode december is sticky because things start to get really busy especially depending on the type of life and family life and routine that you have september might start to get really complicated and we don't want to set ourselves up to fail so i'm using september to do some stuff to get started i'm borrowing that so that i don't need to rely on december so much but i'm still using september as a bit of a prequel most of the action will happen in october and november now i know that the lock-in sounds really nice because three months is really really significant it's a whole quarter of the year or it might even be four months if you're doing september to december or some people say that they are but it's actually a really long time it's a really nice long time in terms of what we can get done and we don't want to diminish it as as worthless and write it off but it is also quite a long time so i don't want you to think yeah yeah i can do this for three months when really you know i'm seeing tiktoks of people suggesting that you don't buy anything non-essential for three months fucking get real sorry that's really harsh but the majority of people are not going to succeed at that and i find it quite unhelpful advice to suggest it of course as always caveating this with i'm speaking to you if you have the choice of where to put a surplus of income right now if you are you know right on the line where your income and expenses are basically on the nose with one another absolutely like you're already doing that you are already slaying you're already doing your absolute best and you shouldn't be putting pressure on yourself to change anything but my point is people that have a surplus of income that they spend on discretionary items that they spend on hedonic purchases or hedonic experiences things that are non-essential telling people to go from where they are right now which might be you know obviously wanting some kind of change to not spending anything non-essential between now and the end of the year is bonkers it's bonkers and it's unfair because you'll go oh yeah wow love a challenge and you'll get two weeks in and be like fuck i hate this so my point is 12 weeks is a really long time so do not be afraid to have a different focus in different months so coming back to what i was saying about the focus for september october november and december september monitor and awareness october is the real sprint that's when we really start putting things down we start you know doing the first week of whatever kind of challenge we're doing we do the first week of what we're trying to optimize now you might choose to have for your sprint period a different focus each week you might focus on a different area of spending each week you might focus on spending one week side hustling the next week organizing your money the next week and do a frugal bitch week the week after that's when you're like super super frugal you don't buy any non-essentials just for a week and you just like free up a bit of money to accelerate a goal that you're working towards you might do it that way or you might be like really locked in on one specific thing for example your spending or you might be locked in on optimizing your extra money from your side hustle or whatever it might be you might be focused on building your side hustle whatever it is but the point of october is the sprint we really start going for the thing that we're working towards it doesn't mean perfection but we really start actually doing the things based on the things that we identified in september november is what i call squeeze the lemon where we go okay how can i push a little bit more here do i need a little bit of a break before i push to get the last little bit out because november is the real last month where it is like a really nice runway do i give this one more kick into gear i do this with business december is a funny one sometimes it can be busy sometimes it's not this is my first year having a talent manager so i'm not sure what it will be like for december but november in terms of what i'm doing and the things that i'm doing for myself november is my last push by december people start going out of the office in my experience so november is the last squeeze of the lemon how can i go you know what i kept saying i was going to do that i'm going to do that thing how can you add on an extra kilometer to your walk or an extra thousand steps how can you go oof i'm gonna you know have this really specific money goal this week i'm gonna really push for that this week i'm gonna you know think of something that squeezes the lemon a bit more than october and then december is for tapering so december acknowledges the reality of december the reality will be nearly at the end and also the reality that you've been in a sprint previously it doesn't mean going oh fuck i made it now i can just go back to doing everything i was doing before because i haven't really embedded a thing proper no but there's something to be said about acknowledging what december is going to be like and setting yourself up for success so tapering back enjoying some of the fruits of your labor if you've saved up some money you might be using it to enjoy december to have a nice time to use money as a resource to enjoy your life you know a lot of what i do whether it's smartspentember or the work we do together on this podcast it's not about not spending any money it's always about getting value out of our money and aligning our money to our values so maybe if you've been focusing on mindless spending in october and november maybe december is when you go right i'm really going to try on alignment based spending values based spending i've worked out that i really really value um convenience and comfort and luxury experiences so what i'm going to do this month is i'm going to allow myself to experience that i'm going to give myself a budget for luxury and i'm going to buy myself flowers to have on my bench and i'm going to take an uber to meet my friends and i'm going to stay in that hotel or whatever it might be and we're not doing that in a way that's going to blow our budget or undo our work we're doing it using what we've learned from the sprint and again to create new evidence to gradually change the person that we are with money our financial identity our financial confidence so i'll go over that one more time september monitor and awareness collect the data and decide how you're going to use that october is your sprint it's when we start kicking things off november we squeeze the lemon it's where we squeeze up that last little bit we kick into overdrive we go a little bit harder and december we taper we enjoy how far we've come we start to see the benefits and most importantly this leads him onto my last tip remember to reflect now you might use december as your reflection or you might reflect as you go if you're still kind of refining what it is that you are working on a lot of what i bring to this podcast when i'm sharing my own experiences is you know me that does this for a living i'm always kind of talking in this realm i'm always sort of on these runways where i'm talking about behavior change and development and things like that whereas if this is your first time doing this kind of thing or it's your first time revisiting it for a while you might want to build in more reflection points so that you can actually see what you're learning how it's feeling and how you can do more of what is working and less of what is not working it pays to reflect to make sure that you're actually getting what you want out of the sprint if you are just making yourself miserable and you're thinking god i cannot wait to blow this 300 i've saved that's not really what we want we want to make it something that makes us feel good and actually kind of comes back to a broader purpose what is the purpose of doing all of this i'm going to talk about this separately in a separate episode of this series of using the pact framework for goal setting when the first p of that is purposeful having a broader purpose for what we're working towards whether you are working towards going on a holiday whether you are working towards a sense of ease and a reduction of the mental load whether you are working towards confidence in your money whether you're working towards taking time off taking a job change whatever it is when there is something broader there is your lighthouse we can ask ourselves is everything i'm doing actually getting me to that point it might even be an element of your values you know i want to have more money to live you know xyz kind of lifestyle or maybe you realize there's a gap in the lifestyle that you want to be leading and you're working towards being able to live that or making a certain change that requires you to have a certain like level of financial confidence i've talked a lot on this podcast about how last year i had to ask myself some really hard questions about why i wasn't that happy with my lifestyle and where i was living i said i think i think i said this on the podcast i had a lot of resentment i would see these videos that would come up and it would be like people that have moved to australia or sometimes australians and it would be like oh my god this is what life is like in australia and i i had so much resentment to these videos because i was like that's not what life is like in australia and obviously like it's not you know it's true it's not what life is like in australia but what was getting to me was that i saw this life that people were leading i wanted to lead it and i wasn't leading it and not because of money or anything like that though of course it does help if you live within like a two minute walk of bondi beach but it was saying about how you know people spend a lot of time outdoors and people go to the beach and people you know spend time you know doing x y and z things and i wasn't doing those things because they weren't accessible to me with the life i was living but i kind of had to get real and i was like well well well if it isn't the consequences of your own decisions you chose to live in this suburb you can't fit in going to the beach because you don't live near the beach so what are we going to do about that and so we changed our lifestyle we moved close to the beach which obviously you know have you seen the prices around the beach on the inner city like it meant moving substantially further away from the city it meant a different lifestyle and now that that kind of big part is done the work is not over to realize that goal now i have to actually live the life i said i wanted to live like going to the yoga class actually going to the beach i think this all the time when i see the really nice houses that are like right on the beach obviously i'm nowhere near those people but i look and i'm thinking nobody's on their balconies and look they're obviously somewhere they're working there you know they were there before i wasn't looking but i always think about it i'm like we think that when we have the resources we'll do the thing we think that when all the conditions are perfect we'll do it we'll make the most of it but we don't we don't i bet you there are people that live even closer to the beach than i do within like walking distance of the beach and i bet they never go and i bet they said they would and they didn't anyway how did i get on to telling you this my point is whatever it is that you're working towards having a broader purpose of something that you want to experience is going to help you stay accountable and also measure whether or not you are getting closer to that or not but also too it can hold you accountable to whether you actually do have the means to live it and you're still not living it because we think that when we have all the resources and all of our ducks lined up we will start living the life that we want but it is not necessarily true a lot of people you know we want to build something into our spending routine but we keep wasting money on things that are not that and then we moan i don't have enough money well do we sometimes we don't sometimes we do that's why we need to spend some time that is why investigation and curiosity and awareness is such a big part of a lock-in we can't just jump into changing things we need to understand what it is that we're working towards first okay that concludes episode one of the lock-in series i hope that you're locked in i hope that you're excited let me know what you're locking in for send this to somebody that you know is locking in or that you think wants to lock in or is in the lock-in trend vortex like everybody else send this to them i think they'll really enjoy it and stay tuned for another episode of the lock-in series coming next week i'm not sure when i'm going to drop these i've got the wardrobe mini series coming this weekend there's gonna be a lot of content i've got my mini series with kobe as well there's a lot of stuff so i may not get around to the next episode until next week but i'm gonna keep talking about this lock-in as we go through the months because the topic is probably going to fade away into oblivion as everybody falls off of the wagon of the newness like a bit like new year content january is rampant and then it's gone by march i'm going to keep talking about it through q4 because you know q4 is my favorite and hopefully whether you are locked in now and you stay locked in or you jump in and you jump out you drop in and you drop off you're going to come back around to locking in to some degree you're going to come back around to the things that you said you want to be yourself and you're going to get whether it's one percent or a hundred percent of it you're going to get it by the end of the year okay i'm so proud of you thank you for listening thank you for supporting my work i always appreciate you if you have not yet ordered it pre-ordered your copy of the wardrobe project please go and do so the links will be in the show notes you know how much it means to me okay lots of love i'll talk to you in the next episode bye